


Hyde

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 09:11:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/977013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted





	Hyde

 It’s only a short time until his curiosity turns to avarice.

Castiel wakes alone in their cabin, mosquito nets flapping, air stifling hot. It’s humid here, always; he doesn’t know if it’s where they are, or if it’s just the whole world that’s heating up, getting  _closer;_ air a physical weight, sweat a permanent stink on his skin.

Dean is not in the room, and he perhaps ought not to have expected it; Dean hasn’t stayed a full night in almost eight months now, rolling out of bed with some excuse; some mission, some person, some need. Castiel never really thought to argue about it, and long done are their days of sleep-soaked communion, coupling in motel rooms, rattling the shoddy light-fixtures as they fucked each other, laughing, against the wall.

Now Dean comes to him, and sleeps a foot away. They meet in the middle sometimes, but Castiel worries, mostly, if it is by chance; if Dean is just an opportunist, and Castiel is simply the thing with which he most often happens to collide.

He wanders out of the room, half-dressed and stinking, and the sunlight has turned everything acid-bright; grass a high green, the sky aching, pulsing blue that makes his temples throb. Dean is at the trucks near the main gate, talking to a group of people, and Castiel ceases to care about making a spectacle of himself when he staggers over.

“Can I talk to you?” he interrupts, voice thicker than he’d expected, and Dean looks at him, affronted.

“Can it  _wait?”_ he hisses, meaning, always,  _don’t fucking tell them what we did,_ like they don’t already fucking know. Risa – Castiel has always liked Risa - hides her amusement behind a hand.

So Castiel waits, as obtrusively as possible, beside Dean and his little throng of acolytes. He taps his foot, hums softly, pantomimes looking at an imaginary watch, until Dean is so irritated he’s casting furious glances Castiel’s way every half-second, gaze laced with poison.

When he’s finally done, the group dispersed, he rounds on Castiel. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You weren’t there when I woke up.”

Dean stares at him. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Deadly. You could at least have woken me.”

Dean stares at him for a further thirty seconds, before grabbing his forearm and tugging him back to the cabin. Castiel submits to it, tiredly; it is enough to be manhandled, and worse to make a big deal about it. He used to  _like_ pretending Dean could throw him around a little, but these days, now Dean actually has half a chance at doing it for real, it is much more depressing than sexy. Dean lets him go when they reach the cabin, and Castiel finds himself fixating on the fucking mess they’ve been cohabiting in; sheets thrown messily across the bed, stained with god-knows-what. There’s a condom wrapper in the corner of the room that must be  _weeks_ old, because Dean won’t fuck him bare, and he hasn’t actually been inside Castiel for a good long while.

“You’re rude to me,” Castiel says plainly, looking at him as seriously as he can manage. “You treat me like shit all day, and then you expect me to suck you off in the evenings, like everything’s fucking roses,” he makes a face, “Honestly, Dean, I’m starting to feel a little underappreciated.”

Dean gapes at him, and then his face twists into a harsh, rankled frown. “I’m too busy for this,” he mutters, half under his breath, and turns on his heel without another word, starting to walk away. Castiel catches his wrist, and pulls him back with ease.

“Don’t run away from me.”

“I’m  _not,”_ Dean looks at him and his expression flickers to soft before it hardens again, “I’m not your fucking  _wife,_ Cas. You have to find something else to…  _fixate_ on.”

Anger pools, hungry, in his gut. He’s got a hidden recess of it, somewhere deep inside him; like liquid, it occasionally replaces his blood; anger, frustration,  _rage_ at how fucking unfair it all is. He can feel it now, boiling and frothing, pushing at his skin; but he never releases it, never does a damned thing, and perhaps that’s why, right now, he feels as if he could bleed from it, or explode. “I am not  _fixated._ I am asking you to treat me with a modicum of  _decency,”_ he pauses, “I know that you’re  _embarrassed,_ but I thought I was your friend, Dean, before anything else.”

Dean falters, mouth twisting. He hangs in the doorway and presses one hand against the frame, fingers clenching on the wood. “Can we talk about this later?” he murmurs, softly, “I have – they’re waiting for me.”

Castiel is reluctant to let him go; never knows which Dean will return, or which Castiel will remain, when he does. But he nods, slightly, lets him go, and doesn’t see him again until the evening, when he’s already in bed, sweating through the hellish night air, cigarette dangling listlessly from his mouth.

Dean crawls, naked, into bed beside him, and kisses his cheek. “Sorry,” he mumbles, palms finding the spurs of Castiel’s hips, the shape of his cock beneath the bedclothes; thighs, ass, knees. “I’m sorry, Cas,” he says, again, and when his hand finds Castiel’s own, he allows him to hold it. Dean shuffles up the bed to hover over him, and plucks the cigarette from between Cas’ lips, holding it away, so they can kiss. He puts it back when he’s done and Castiel laughs, despite himself. “I love you, Cas. You know that, right?”

Castiel closes his eyes. “Yeah?” he replies, drawn in by the words he first heard five fucking years ago, when Dean was too drunk and too miserable to know any better than to say them.

“Yeah, of course,” Dean says, like it is obvious, and in this moment he supposes it is; there’s a romance to them at night, pushing together with the bedframe creaking beneath them, the rasp of Dean’s adoration humming against his neck. Dean says it so often it’s a wonder it still makes him weak,  _loveyouloveyou,_ endless susurrus, frantic babbling.

“You too,” he manages, softly, and realises he has lost this round, again, when he stubs his cigarette out on the bedpost, and flicks the butt away. He never means to give in like this; to accept Dean’s affection, his searching hands; but this is the Dean he knows, he _knew_ , at night. Not the leader, not the soldier, not the husk; a soft, golden skinned boy who smiles too easily, laughs eager, and curious, and careful.

Castiel slings his arm around Dean’s shoulders, pulls him down, and swathes himself in the rush of Dean’s words;  _loveyouloveyou,_ always apology now, never prayer.

In the morning Dean is still there, but he’s the other man.

They play this game, this Jekyll-Hyde; Dean comes to bed a young man in love, and leaves it cold and biting.

Castiel watches him leave the cabin without so much as a goodbye, and as he retrieves his pack of cigarettes from the floor, and lights one, he wonders how long it will take. How many love-yous, how many bitter shrugs, before Castiel stops wanting all of him; the soldier, the boy, the righteous man, the demon he almost became.

He knows Dean stopped loving him the minute Sam died. Dean stopped loving everything, then.

But he likes the way it rolls in his mouth, likes how they are, when they’re together. He’s too old, too drowned, to push him away at this point, and more than all those things, he is greedy. 


End file.
